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Health & Fitness

Best Mother's Day Ever

Sometimes the gift that you wanted most of all comes at the most trying of times.

I approach Mother’s Day with my own special flavor of trepidation, as my mother passed away a few years ago—on Thanksgiving 2008, to be precise.  Mom had timing, I’ll give her that.

Despite her many issues, mom was always easy on Mother’s Day.  I had but to send her the most expensive, over-the-top bouquet of flowers and snobbiest brand of chocolates and I was golden.  If she was in town, I only need have taken her the restaurant that was the most impossible to get at table at.   Mom was nothing if not predictable.

Those who know me well will be quick to say that I am nothing like my mother.   Flowers I find expensive especially since I grow my own.  I have no sweet tooth to speak of and most designer chef-type restaurants bore me with their instance on trying to reinvent things that often don't require it.  I often despite; please stop trying to impress and just cook for heaven's sake.

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I just hope my daughter appreciates how incredibly low maintenance I am on Mother’s Day.   She keeps trying to buy me stuff but in truth, all I require is that she show up, baby in tow, for an intimate family brunch.   I fancy myself a far better cook than most chefs and while I don’t mind brunch-y corporate places like IHop, I cannot imagine trying to get into that place on Mother’s Day for brunch, even in Milpitas.   My BFF and I told everyone we knew that the most exciting thing to happen to Milpitas was the opening of an IHop restaurant.  We were only half kidding.   And it’s not like they are not going to put fresh herbs and melt goat cheese into my daughter’s scrambled eggs the way I do.

My granddaughter, Baby CJ, has inherited her mother’s DNA-infused belief that my food is way better than anyone else’s food.   And 'my food' means anything on 'my' plate.   This is why Baby CJ came home from a hockey game with me recently with suspicious and curious case of Pizza Breath.  

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The thing that is cool about this Mother’s Day, aside from the quality of meal I am planning of course, is that my daughter now GETS IT.   She gets the fears and worries of raising a child now that she is a mother herself.   My daughter would be the first to tell you that she was not the easiest child.   She could be stubborn, angry and rebellious.   It took making some pretty serious mistakes growing up for her to realize that while her own mother didn’t know everything, I sure had more answers and common sense than she had given me credit for.   And that’s when she started to listen and learn.

Still, her path was not always easy and she struggled.   Then came the day that I knew in my heart that my daughter would truly be ok, that she had turned a corner in her life.   Ironically, it was the day I started chemotherapy.   We didn’t know it at the time but she was already two weeks pregnant with Baby CJ.  

Anyone who has been in a chemo room knows they keep those rooms icy cold to ward off infection and that they can be just about most depressing places on earth.   People are just so darn sick.   Nobody has eyelashes or hair and it’s just scary, rubbing elbows with hopelessness that way because most of the people in there seem to be Stage 4 and likely terminal.   There is a aura of death and fear that hangs like a damp cloud over everyone and everything.  Nobody is smiling and everyone feels horrible, lying helpless under a mountain of blankets and too exhausted from the chemo to so much as acknowledge the kindness from the amazing chemo nurses.   Everyone is silently hoping to heck the nurse will find a vein and that they won’t, like I did in rounds two and three, have a severe allergic reaction and actually go into anaphylactic shock.   Chemo rooms are not places for the faint of heart.

So, my daughter went and she was so brave.   While they hooked me up to an IV, she left me for just a few brief minutes and I would later find out she had snuck into an empty nearby stairwell to sob uncontrollably with the unfairness and the fear of it all before sucking it up and coming back to my side, all smiles and strength once again.   She gave herself something like five short minutes to break down and then she simply sucked it up.  It was exactly, in retrospect, what I would have done had that been me taking my mother to chemo.  When she returned, she was dry-eyed and absolutely fierce.   I don’t do tears and she knew that.   And she was also not about to let me see how truly terrified she was for me, for us, for our entire family.   So, there she was, my once troubled kid toughing out an absolutely horrifying situation.   Just a few short months before, I never would have guessed at the determination that lay beneath: her strength and yes, a stubbornness --- this time done right.  Where did this grown up, brave girl come up?  When had she become such a fiercely loving, mature young woman?   Somewhere between my nagging about catching her smoking and getting beyond those awful choices in boyfriends, she found her way.  and it had taken getting cancer for me to see it.   It struck me at the time that she was going to make an amazing mother herself one day.   I  could never have guessed at just how soon that prediction would come true.

So, while my own mother won’t be there this Sunday, my granddaughter will and my daughter will and I will.  Still here.  Still buying goofy cards and making scrambled eggs just the way my daughter loves them and hoping to craft some heretofore undiscovered recipe for making waffles that the baby will love.   And really, with the daughter and grandbaby I have been blessed with, there could be no more amazing Mother’s Day gift. 

 I already have everything a mom could ever want.

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